NICOLAS CRISPINI

Apart from his activity as a curator of exhibitions and his contribution to the valorization of historical photography collections, for several years now Nicolas Crispini has also been doing his own photographic work on human presence, temporality, and the experience of place.

Shown here, his Night Watch pieces point up the use of X-ray photography over the last 15 years to track down migrants. The images were found in the press, then scanned so that the text on the other side would be visible, making them harder to read. Stripped bare, transfixed by waves, dematerialized, these anonymous figures are by turns strangely reminiscent of funerary poses and cutaway drawings of 18th century slave ships. A dark vestige of our civilization left by technology.